March 2009 Blog Posts (10)

Friday, March 27, 2009
Bad news for local herring folks. First, the dredging of Mill Creek seems to be going on full stream. It won’t take long for the work to end but the aftereffects will linger, including a different chemical signature for Mill Creek -- meaning the spawning fish won’t recognize their natal creek “smell” and won’t go up it. Nevertheless, the big news about the herring is a very harsh new herring rule reducing the bag limit to just 10 fish. I assume this only means… Continue

Correction/clarification: I caught a glaring inaccuracy in my story on the Mill Creek dredging. I accidentally let the American eel sneak in under the anadromous category when I know perfectly well, and have written in my column on numerous occasions, that the eel is not anadromous but instead travels into the ocean (Saragossa Sea) to spawn. It is in a bit of its own category in as much as it lives its life in both freshwater and saltwater, though it is still catadromous, technically -- the… Continue

Well, it looks like members of the Canadian parliament have turned their attentions from their wives and concentrated on beating baby seals instead. (Can you tell this is gonna be kinda editorial?)
That frozen-brained nation’s Federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea announced Friday that Canada will allow baby seal bludgeoners to kill 338,200 young-of-year animals in 2009. That’s 55,000 more bashed brains than last year. Maybe there’s… Continue

UPDATE ON CRAZIES AT HOLGATE: That tale of the naked folks captured at Holgate has gotten a whole lot freakier. Turns out a male, naked as a buzzard’s head, came running out of the Forsythe Wildlife Refuge and into the housed area. He went to a home where he screamed he was dying after, by his own freaked out admission, he had taken “magic mushrooms.” Obviously, this man was not mentally prepared for the rush of psilocin in “shrooms.” No, I have no personal insights into this (or any drug) but… Continue

Thursday, March 19, 2009:
Well, there are some non-power plant fish to talk about. Flats near Barnegat Inlet (mainly north, inside bay) have shown great promise – and a few great fish, at least for this early in the year. Folks working the banks have taken keeper bass and seen a load of surface “V’s, as bass spook off the shallows. Those flats fish are obviously hanging in the milder water and likely taking advantage of the mud-out of grass shrimp and even an occasional crab. Also, as… Continue

March 17, 09:
Late breaking: I have it on good authority that Stafford Township accepted bids to dredge Mill Creek, with work beginning as early as this week. In fact, some initial clear cutting near the deposit area has already taken place – right where perching takes place.
You’ll note in the weekly column below that perch fishing has already taken off in the area where Mill Creek flows into the channel. This dredging will not only kill a potentially powerful perch bite but will… Continue

(Sorry, a glitch – by me – failed to place this weekly column in here on schedule. Sorry. This week’s “weekly” column will be in here late tomorrow. All past columns can be found at http://jaymanntoday.ning.com .

RUN-DOWN AND STUFF: Just like that the snow is no more. A couple 70-dgree days will do that. Hell, even those blackened piles of plowed snow are giving up the gritty ghost.
This melt-away clears… Continue

The 2008 summer flounder fishing season marked a bleak new era in the history of coastal fisheries management, going down in the books as the first year that the mortality associated with recreational discards of summer flounder equaled the overall harvest mortality. Based on the statistical numbers from the Marine Recreational Fishing Statistical Survey… Continue

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?: This is a story about a lost cellphone. So far, so normal. Hell, I routinely lose mine. In fact, where the hell is that thing?
The difference between my routine loses and that of businessman Andrew Cheatle, 45, was the fishy way his surfside loss of cellphone played out.

While horsing around with his dog on the beach, right at the water’s edge, Cheatle’s Nokia decided to take a dip on its own.… Continue